Philippe Clement is “very determined” to see his Rangers project through to fruition as he deals with intense pressure ahead of the Premier Sports Cup semi-final against Motherwell.
Criticism reached a crescendo following the 2-1 defeat by Aberdeen at Pittodrie on Wednesday night which left the Light Blues nine points behind William Hill Premiership leaders Celtic and the Dons.
The Belgian boss signed a new contract extension in August that will keep him in Govan until the summer of 2028 but there is sense of crisis around Ibrox, with the club operating without a permanent chairman, chief executive and director of football, while on Tuesday it was revealed they made a net loss of £17.2million last season.
As he prepared for the trip to Hampden Park, Clement, who took over as Gers boss in October 2023, underlined his ambitions for the club.
He said: “I’m very determined about it, and I know also at this moment, I’m the face of it.
“There’s nobody else talking or there’s nobody else explaining things.
“So that creates also everything towards me, but I’m very determined to make it really successful, because this club deserves that also.
“But that was the main reason to change things. This club didn’t want to make the same mistakes as in the past, to always look only short-term.
“There was only one possibility, to look long-term in everything you had to do, in making choices in transfer window, but also to make it first, sustainable, and secondly, to create profit for the future, because otherwise this club would come into difficulty.
“So that’s the first step made. Now there are some steps made along the way in performances.
“It’s not that we have lost all the games or all the games were terrible, but we need to make things better the next weeks and the next months.
“That’s clear because we want to reach our goals, and that’s competing for everything.”
Clement revealed his players were “really down” after the defeat by Aberdeen which decimated further title hopes which were already fragile but is confident they will respond positively, starting against Stuart Kettlewell’s side on Sunday.
The Light Blues boss, who stressed that there will be no change of formation as “I think it will only create more doubts”.
He said: “We had a long meeting on Friday about everything, about our basics, about our principles, about what we did wrong, and also about what they did right because it was not only wrong, and they took a lot of responsibility.
“Like I said, they’re hungry to be better, to prove better, to have more the feelings like they had a few times this season in the good games, and to get the good results, and to give the fans what they deserve to see in football and in results.
“And they show hunger about that. So that’s why my confidence is there about that, also, that we need to put standards really high, and then on Sunday, we’re going to get a better performance.”
